Friday, March 27, 2015

Charlie Wicker of Trailhead Coffee Roasters makes all of his deliveries within the 6-mile radius of Portland, Oregon on one of his custom-built cargo bikes. Photo credit: John Lee / Trailhead Coffee Roasters

Yes, they're really cool, but they're also eco-friendly.

While food on-the-go is nothing new—wheeled food carts delivering food to cowboys and soldiers date back as early as the late 1800s—food bikes are seeing a sudden urban resurgence likely fueled by the recent food truck craze.

According to IBISWorld market research,
food trucks are a booming industry with $857 million in sales in 2015
with an estimated 4,000 businesses employing nearly 15,000 people
nationwide. While the industry is expected to continue to thrive, the
drag of costly equipment, unfavorable regulatory conditions and
gas-guzzling trucks has a new crop of traveling food entrepreneurs
opting instead for cheaper eco-friendly food bikes. READ MORE

The suffering kids experience over college admissions is intense and largely unnecessary.

I know a high school senior who’s so worried about whether she’ll be accepted at the college of her choice she can’t sleep.

The
parent of another senior tells me he stands at the mailbox for an hour
every day waiting for a hoped-for acceptance letter to arrive.

Parents
are also uptight. I’ve heard of some who have stopped socializing with
other parents of children competing for admission to the same
university.

Competition
for places in top-brand colleges is absurdly intense. With inequality
at record levels and almost all the economic gains going to the top,
there’s more pressure than ever to get the golden ring.
A degree
from a prestigious university can open doors to elite business schools
and law schools – and to jobs paying hundreds of thousands, if not
millions, a year.

So parents who can afford it are paying grotesque sums to give their kids an edge.
They “enhance”
their kids' resumes with such things as bassoon lessons, trips to
wildlife preserves in Botswana, internships at the Atlantic
Monthly. They hire test-prep coaches. They arrange for consultants to
help their children write compelling essays on college applications.

They
make generous contributions to the elite colleges they once attended,
to which their kids are applying – colleges that give extra points to
“legacies” and even more to those from wealthy families that donate tons
of money.

Vermont, a state perceived as a liberal utopia by many, is
being hit with a barrage of anti-labor policies. In a recent budget
address, Gov. Peter Shumlin called out Vermont State Employees'
Association, declaring he expected VSEA to reopen its contracts to ditch
pay increases. The governor also announced that he plans to hack away
at state jobs by consolidating emergency call centers and closing a
school that serves state prisoners. In addition, he said that Vermont
parents should “expect better outcomes for our students at lower costs.”
He’s called for education cuts and higher student-teacher ratios, moves
that will probably result in layoffs. This past fall, he announced he
wants to outlaw teacher strikes in the state. That idea might soon
become a reality: a bill prohibiting public school teachers from
striking was recently introduced by Republican Rep. Kurt Wright and passed the House Education Committee by a vote of 8-3.

Shumlin is a Democrat who has received support
from Bernie Sanders and owes much of his success to the working people
of Vermont. He was supported by VSEA when he first ran for governor in
2010, after he criticized his Republican predecessor’s proposed layoffs
and budget-cutting methods. The union continued to support him during
his re-elections in 2012 and 2014. Before the last election, in 2014,
Shumlin met with all the unions and assured them that he could be
counted on. He insisted that layoffs would be a last resort. He won that
election by less than 2,500 votes and, because he received less than
50% of the state's vote, his win had to be approved by the Vermont
General Assembly. If Shumlin hadn't obtained support from the unions,
there's a very real chance he could have lost. READ MORE

America's .01 percent like the Kochs and the Hiltons are collecting massive subsidies from the federal government.

Americans love ranchers: Gritty ranchers, mom-and-pop ranchers,
renegade ranchers — especially those who raise livestock on the vast
open prairies of the West through a mixture of hard work and rugged
independence. But there’s another side to the ever-popular rancher
mythology— a side the media doesn’t cover and the public never sees. The
Koch brothers, Ted Turner, the Hilton family and nine other powerful
ranchers share an uncommon privilege: giant public subsidies, unknown to
U.S. taxpayers.

It’s the other side of the Cliven Bundy story, the other side of the Wright brothers saga—the bronc-riding, ranching family at the center of the New York Times photographic essay published this March.
That
“other side” of those stories is the federal grazing program that
enables the Wrights to run their livestock on public lands for cheap;
allows ranchers to have thousands of protected wild horses removed from
public lands at public expense. It’s also the program that earned Cliven
Bundy the title of "welfare rancher." READ MORE

Americans' lack of worldliness clouds their views on everything from economics to sex to religion.

To hear the far-right ideologues of Fox News and AM talk
radio tell it, life in Europe is hell on Earth.

Taxes are high, sexual
promiscuity prevails, universal healthcare doesn’t work, and millions of
people don’t even speak English as their primary language! Those who
run around screaming about “American exceptionalism” often condemn
countries like France, Norway and Switzerland to justify their jingoism.
Sadly, the U.S.’ economic deterioration means that many Americans
simply cannot afford a trip abroad to see how those countries function
for themselves. And often, lack of foreign travel means accepting
clichés about the rest of the world over the reality. And that lack of
worldliness clouds many Americans' views on everything from economics to
sex to religion.

Here are nine things Americans can learn from the rest of the world. READ MORE

Harrisburg, PA– Hummelstown police Officer, Lisa J. Mearkle was
charged with criminal homicide on Tuesday in the shooting death
of 59-year-old David Kassick on February 2.
Mearkle shot Kassick as he laid face down on the ground in the snow, unarmed, during a routine traffic stop gone awry.

Mearkle
had attempted to pull Kassick over for an expired inspection sticker,
but the situation escalated when Kassick attempted to flee from the
officer.

Eventually
Mearkle caught up to the motorist close to his sister’s home where he
was staying, but Kassick got out of the vehicle and fled on foot. As he
was attempting to run away, he was incapacitated by the officer’s taser
which she held in her left hand. With her right hand, she unnecessarily
pulled out her service gun and shot the unarmed man twice in the back
as he lay face-down on the ground. READ MORE

Residents didn't tolerate Americans for Prosperity's propaganda at a town hall meeting.

The Koch brothers have made stopping Medicaid expansion under Obamacare a top priority for their state efforts. It worked last week in Tennessee. Their allies did it in Wyoming, too. But not all states are as receptive to their interference. Take Montana, where a Koch road-show against Medicaid expansion was greeted by some well-informed and angry Montanans.

Seems
that Americans for Prosperity has been having "Healthcare Town Hall"
meetings around the state, trying to relive the glory days of August
recess 2009 when they terrorized politicians and citizens alike with
stories about death panels and the evils of affordable health insurance.
They decided to have one in Kalispell targeting Rep. Frank Garner, a
Republican who has refused to sign their pledge to vote against Medicaid
expansion. They did, though, without inviting Garner to appear as well.

Garner,
who made the eight-hour round trip from Helena to attend the meeting,
took umbrage with the postcards and said the group never told him about
the meeting, which he learned about from a reporter on the House floor
at the Capitol. […] READ MORE

They showed that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney didn't have to endorse inhumane methods.

Why was it again that, as President Obama said, “we tortured some folks”
after the 9/11 attacks? Oh, right, because we were terrified. Because
everyone knows that being afraid gives you moral license to do whatever
you need to do to keep yourself safe. That’s why we don’t shame or
punish those who were too scared to imagine doing anything else. We honor and revere them.

Back in August 2014, Obama explained
the urge of the top figures in the Bush administration to torture “some
folks” this way: “I understand why it happened. I think it’s important,
when we look back, to recall how afraid people were when the twin
towers fell.” So naturally, in those panicked days, the people in charge
had little choice but to order the waterboarding, wall-slamming, and rectal rehydration of whatever possible terrorists(and innocents)
the CIA got their hands on. That’s what fear drives you to do and don’t
forget, at the time even some mainstream liberal columnists were calling for torture. And whatever you do, don’t forget as well that they were so, so afraid.
That’s why, says the president, “It’s important for us not to feel too
sanctimonious,” too quick to judge the people in the Bush
administration, the CIA, and even the U.S. military who planned,
implemented, and justified torture. READ MORE

HSBC, the world’s second largest bank, helped some of the richest people in the world stash away billions in assets to avoid taxes.
The Swiss arm of the British banking giant encouraged wealthy clients
to hide their fortunes from governments and other taxing authorities and
helped to make their transactions untraceable.

A group of media organizations, including the BBC, The Guardian, LeMonde, and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists obtained documents revealing the complex tax dodge scheme.

The
documents reveal that HSBC’s exclusive Swiss bank allowed rich clients
to withdraw bricks of cash in various foreign currencies to hide such
transactions. The bank also conspired with clients in creating
undeclared “black” accounts to hide their wealth from domestic taxing
authorities. Moreover, this service was aggressively marketed by HSBC
bankers to uber-rich clients, including wealthy heirs, unethical
financiers, business executives, Hollywood stars, European royalty and
even global crime figures. READ MORE

My recent column about the growth of on-demand jobs like Uber making
life less predictable and secure for workers unleashed a small barrage
of criticism from some who contend that workers get what they’re worth
in the market.

A Forbes Magazine contributor, for example, writes that
jobs exist only “when both employer and employee are happy with the
deal being made.” So if the new jobs are low-paying and irregular, too
bad.

Much the same argument was voiced in the late nineteenth century over alleged “freedom of contract.” Any deal between employees and workers was assumed to be fine if both sides voluntarily agreed to it.

It was an era when many workers were “happy” to toil twelve-hour days in sweat shops for lack of any better alternative.

It
was also a time of great wealth for a few and squalor for many. And of
corruption, as the lackeys of robber barons deposited sacks of cash on
the desks of pliant legislators. READ MORE

I don't know why the author of this Atlantic piece sounds so surprised. Has he never been in a poor neighborhood? Guys selling T-shirts, handbags, produce and used appliances on the street -- of course putting an economic floor under people encourages them to take a shot at something bigger and better. Walter Frick for The Atlantic:

Reagan was right about the link between startups and growth, but wrong in assuming that small government was the way to encourage them.
His belief in a tradeoff between taking care of citizens and
promoting innovative new businesses is at odds with the evidence. In
fact, one way to get more people to start companies, according to a
growing body of research, is to expand the welfare state.
Pundits and researchers often note the negative correlation between government spending and entrepreneurship, both within the U.S. and internationally, and conclude that growth requires trimming social welfare programs. Jim Manzi of theNational Review,
for example, a thoughtful commenter on economic policy, wrote last year
that, “we must accept some amount of social dislocation in return for
innovation.”

Yeah, he kind of lost me at the point where he describes a National
Review writer as "a thoughtful commenter on economic policy," but do go
on: READ MORE

Thursday, March 26, 2015

Preserving the rich cultural heritage of a state can guide many
lawmakers to look at the past for a point of reference of how to build
their state going forward. Missouri Jeff Pogue, R-Salem, may have taken
this nostalgia just a bit too far.http://www.columbiatribune.com/...

“I’m wanting to protect the social norms of our state, the
same social norms that have operated in our state since the organization
of Missouri in 1820,” Pogue said in an email. “These Missourian
cultural rules, the status quo, are nearly 200 years old, and have
operated well throughout our state.”

Pogue said in a statement that if the state “were to change a social
norm of this magnitude,” the General Assembly or voters should make the
decision, through a bill or a ballot measure. The result should apply
statewide, he said.

Rep. Pogue's big issue? It's this sign:

Proposing that state funding should be denied for any unisex bathroom
- unless it is a single stall - Rep. Pogue points out that tradition
deserves to be protected.

Rep. Pogue has also proposed this piece of legislation,
which goes one step farther, by announcing it will remove funding from
any "project, program, or policy that creates or attempts to create a
gender-neutral environment."

No word as to how this would impact universities that have co-ed
dormitories - something that existed when I was in college some time
ago.

Because of the proud cultural history and the need to uphold the
past, I think it is important to remember the significant social issues
of 1820 and beyond in Missouri. READ MORE

The Centers for Disease Control released a pair of reports on Monday
calculating that 11 million people who had been uninsured now have
insurance, thanks to Obamacare. While 37 million people are still
uninsured—some 4 million who would be eligible for Medicaid expansion if
the states took it, the remainder undocumented immigrants and people
either unaware of or purposefully boycotting insurance—this is the lowest uninsured population in more than 15 years.

The CDC reports compared the first nine months of 2014 with
annual statistics going back as far as 1997, from the National Health
Interview Survey. Among the highlights:
— The number of uninsured dropped from 48.6 million in 2010 to 37.2
million for the period from Jan.-Sept. last year. That amounted to 11.4
million fewer uninsured since the signing of the health care law.

— In 2014, about 27 million people said they had been without coverage for more than a year.

— Some 6.8 million people were covered through the health care law's new insurance markets during July-Sept. of 2014.

— The most significant coverage gains last year came among adults
ages 18-64. Nearly 40 million were uninsured in 2013. But that dropped
to 32.6 million in the first nine months of 2014.

— States that moved forward with the law's Medicaid expansion saw a bigger decline in the share of their residents uninsured. READ MORE

*It’s
becoming more and more apparent that white people are more likely to use
drugs, but black people are more likely to go to jail for it. This
country’s criminal justice system is top-heavy with black men in
particular being arrested for nonviolent drug use; while their white
counterparts continue to get high in the privacy of their wherever. It
is important to not forget just how much of a role the War on Drugs and
its disproportionate impact on Black families and communities plays in
the perpetuation of racism and inequality.

Did you know that black
people now constitute nearly 1 million of the total 2.3 million people
who fill America’s jails and prisons? Blacks find themselves
incarcerated at a rate nearly six times that of whites.

And it
is the disparity in drug prosecutions and sentencing that contribute
significantly to the disproportionately high numbers of black people who
are incarcerated. The NAACP reports that despite the fact that five
times as many white people are using drugs as black people, black people
wind up being sent to prison on drug related charges 10 times more
often than white people.

*From the title alone, the height of your rising blood pressure is
not lost on me, readers. You are enraged for several reasons. Allow me
to vent for a sec on your behalf. One, you might be thinking, “How dare
these mother*******! Black people are not even allowed to live in China
for any significant amount of time -let alone start a business there. So
why are Chinese people allowed to open a restaurant in Africa? And now,
they have the unmitigated gall to refuse admission to black Africans
after the 5 o’clock hour?

Yeah. I feel you. And if I were with you physically right now, I would at least consider your request to, “hold you back!”

Hey, do we really need any more signs proving that racism is real?
And it is at times like this, when these little tidbits of information
comes out, that we might recall all those “warnings” from our friends on
their individual soapboxes, that chide us for loving shows like
‘Empire.’ The images they say “are about buffoonery and other negative
things” that ignorant asses all over the world RELY ON to learn about
us. Or help form their perception of us. READ MORE
Video near page bottom after the jump.

Today's Fox and Friends segment with the Doocy, tries to
rile up their gun-crazed audience over the feds cracking down on the
banking practices of these unsavory businesses that are often fronts for
money-launderers.

"This is a very clever way to get around the Second Amendment,"

claims Wisconsin Congressman Sean Duffy (R). Remember Pretty Boy Duffy? The guy who bitched and moaned
about his paltry $174,000 per annum salary? He's beyond livid that
some of the death merchants, a.k.a. "gun dealers" in his district are
facing scrutiny by the D.O.J.'s Operation Choke Point.

What is Operation Choke Point?
(It) is a federal initiative that aims to crack down on fraud by honing
in on banks and payment processors—the companies that serve as
middlemen between merchants and banks on credit card transactions.
Financial institutions are not supposed to do business with companies
they believe might be breaking the law. But Justice Department officials
suspect that some payment processors ignore signs of fraud—like high
percentages of transactions being rejected as unauthorized—in
transactions they process, and banks go along for the ride, earning
massive profits. READ MORE

Speaking of which, your quote of the day:“When you die and get to the meeting with St. Peter, he's probably
not going to ask you much about what you did about keeping government
small, but he's going to ask you what you did for the poor. You'd better
have a good answer.” (Ohio Governor John Kasich , on GOP opposition to Medicaid expansion in Ohio, June 26, 2013)

This story is the reason I absolutely hate the California ballot
initiative process. There are no filters, and nothing to prevent ugly,
hateful measures like this one.

The proposal -- unlikely to advance, as it requires over
360,000 signatures to proceed -- was submitted by lawyer Matthew
McLaughlin to the California Attorney General's office late last month.
The "Sodomite Suppression Act" ballot proposes that gay people "be
put to death by bullets to the head or by any other convenient method."

Under the normal procedure, Attorney General Kamala Harris would have
to issue a title and summary for the initiative so proponents can
gather signatures. Instead, she's going to court to have it declared
unconstitutional in advance.

“As Attorney General of California, it is my sworn duty
to uphold the California and United States Constitutions and to protect
the rights of all Californians. This proposal not only threatens
public safety, it is patently unconstitutional, utterly reprehensible,
and has no place in a civil society. Today, I am filing an
action for declaratory relief with the Court seeking judicial
authorization for relief from the duty to prepare and issue the title
and summary for the "Sodomite Suppression Act." If the Court does not
grant this relief, my office will be forced to issue a title and summary
for a proposal that seeks to legalize discrimination and vigilantism.” READ MORE

Fox News host Andrea Tantaros suggested on Tuesday that feminists had
created a "war on boys" by encouraging false rape reports at
universities.

On Tuesday's edition of Outnumbered, host Harris Faulkner called for an investigation of Rolling Stone in the wake of the news that the Charlottesville police department could not find any evidence to support the claim that a rape reported by the magazine had occurred at the University of Virginia.
"I want an investigation into what Rolling Stone was thinking," Faulkner said. "I don't know that an apology really does it."

"We know from our own reporting here on the couch that they let a
reporter determine that she just wasn't going to track any further than
the website -- she just wasn't going to do the complete job that we
learned in Journalism 101." READ MORE

During
his 2008 campaign, President Barack Obama described himself as a blank
screen on which people project their inner realities. For Martin
Parlett, the British public relations expert who has written Demonizing a
President: The Foreignization Of Barack Obama, this explains both
Obama's electoral success and the obsessive conspiracy-mongering we most
often attribute to the political…

Ed. Note: There have been many books that sought to undertake the
unprecedented right-wing reaction to Obama's presidency, but this is the
first I've read which does so with an eye to what they did as well as
how he set the stage for them to do it. It isn't easy reading, but
definitely worthwhile. If we don't learn history's lessons, we're doomed
to repeat them. FROM THE SITE

It's nice to see someone keep track of statistics on the
disproportionate effects of gun violence on poorer, minority
populations. Dr. Arthur Kamm extensively explains this awful phenomenon
via factual data and statistics in his paper entitled Guns Government Race and Rights: The Demographics Stupid.

This paper examines the effect of our changing
demography in elections, the racial and ethnic targeting of voter
suppression laws, the Manchin-Toomey Senate vote vs Blue Wall States vs
the State Ballot Initiative, effective deployment of capital, and,
unapologetically, a consideration of obstacles in achieving this
objective.

For the purpose of this article, I will focus on Dr. Kamm's
suggestions for helping the South shake the domination of Republicans
who absolutely do not represent the majority of the state(s)'s citizens.

The title of this piece is a play on the phrase coined by Democratic political strategist James Carville during
Bill Clinton’s successful 1992 presidential run, ‘The economy, stupid’.
And regarding the attempts by activist groups to change the national
political landscape on such issues as gun violence, voter
discrimination, healthcare, income/wealth inequality, immigration reform
and so much more, well, ‘It’s the demographics, stupid’. With this
country having just observed the 50th anniversary of ‘Bloody Sunday’
in the fight for African-American voting rights, the minority vote has
over the past 50 years grown into a powerful force that, in 2012, showed
the ability to more than off-set the ‘Southern Strategy’ and, if fully
realized, the potential to flip the South back to Democratic
control (no small matter for the progression of human and civil rights),
perhaps even sooner than later. emphasis mine. READ MORE

Wednesday, March 25, 2015

My guess is that the same Very Serious bobbleheads who have
pronounced Scott Walker a "formidable contender" will delicately avoid
talking about this study. Because FREEDOM:

Wisconsin ranks worst among the 50 states
in terms of a shrinking middle class, with real median household
incomes here falling 14.7 percent since 2000, according to a new report.

The Pew Charitable Trust
report showed Wisconsin with the largest decline in the percentage of
families considered "middle class," or those earning between 67 and 200
percent of their state’s median income.

In 2000, 54.6 percent of Wisconsin families fell into the middle
class category but that has fallen to 48.9 percent in 2013, according to
U.S. Census figures compiled by Pew.
All other states showed some decline but none as great as Wisconsin’s 5.7 percent figure. READ MORE

Oh, the Goddess of Irony is certainly on my side today. The only thing that would be better is knowing that Ted Cruz had to sign up for Obamacare
using the federal exchange as a Texas resident. That way, if the US
Supreme Court screws up the subsidies for people, he could pay
exorbitant insurance rates along with the rest of his fellow Texas
citizens.

Ted Cruz, one of the loudest critics of Obamacare, will soon be using it for health insurance coverage.READ MORE

"Duck Dynasty" star and conservative icon Phil Robertson
told a gruesome, vivid story on Friday about the hypothetical rape and
murder of a family to illustrate the perils of atheism, according to
audio surfaced by Right Wing Watch.

The website reported that Robertson made the remarks during a speech
at a Florida prayer breakfast that was later broadcast by the
conservative radio program TruNews.

Tuesday, March 24, 2015

The UNITED STATES Department of Justice shared its investigative report on the town of Ferguson last week.

Folks RESIGNING and any FIRINGS is NOT good enough, nor is it JUST!
It sends a message that their actions are still acceptable, only if they
aren’t EXPOSED.

And once they get EXPOSED for their acts of racism, extortion,
racketeering, etc, they become a few sacrificial lambs from the herd,
and move on to another institution that practices the same SYSTEMIC
RACISM, HATE, WHITE PRIVILEGE. The laws don’t apply to these folks, just
the NON-WHITE FOLKS.READ MORE

The Indiana House of Representatives passed a religious "freedom" bill
Monday 63-31 that will allow private businesses, individuals and
organizations to discriminate anywhere at any time against any person
they so choose based on religious grounds.

A similar bill already cleared the state Senate. Once the two bills
are reconciled, it will head to the desk of Gov. Mike Pence, who can't wait to sign it into law.

"The legislation, SB 101, is about respecting and reassuring
Hoosiers that their religious freedoms are intact. I strongly support
the legislation and applaud the members of the General Assembly for
their work on this important issue. I look forward to signing the bill
when it reaches my desk."

What a great opportunity for Pence to enact policies that will allow a
chosen few to trample all over the rights of everyone else—as was made clear while the bill was being debated. READ MORE

American companies are sitting on a gold mine—or a cold, hard cash mine to be exact:

Corporate America has so much cash sitting in the bank that
it could purchase the Dallas Cowboys 437 times without borrowing a dime.

For what it's worth, the Dallas Cowboys were last evaluated to be worth more than $3 billion. All told, American companies are sitting on $1.7 TRILLION. Here's why the cash hoarding is bad for the economy:

The bad news is that at least some of these corporate giants
still aren't willing to spend their cash on new equipment, new hires
and new research. It would be a big economic boost if companies went on a
spending spree. Shareholders would also like bigger dividends given all
this cash companies have on hand.

There are a few bright spots:

Six sectors in the S&P 500 are projected to boost spending for the next 12 months, led by technology and health care.

After a five-month investigation,
three Fort Lauderdale officers were fired and one resigned when it was
determined that they regularly exchanged racist text messages and filmed
a video promoting the KKK. The disturbing full photocopies of their
text messages are below the fold.

Included in their exchanges with one another are messages where they
openly talk about "killing nigg*rs". In another exchange about looking
for suspects, they state:

I had a wet dream that you two found those n-----s in the VW and gave them the death penalty right there on the spot. READ MORE

As Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker signed the so-called
"right to work" bill on March 9, making Wisconsin the twenty-fifth
right-to-work state in the country, labor advocates braced themselves
for the stream of anti-worker bills that were almost certain to follow.
Many assumed the first target would be Wisconsin's 1930s prevailing wage
laws, which require that workers on public works projects be paid the
established going rate for their labor, rather than allowing contractors
to try to outbid each other by lowering workers' wages. Few, however,
expected the legislative cluster bomb that is currently being referred
to committee by a pair of Republicans: a bill to repeal the weekend.

(snip)

Walker hasn't said he would sign the bill, but he hasn't spoken out
against it either; nor did he when it was introduced last year. The
elimination of a guaranteed weekend would fit nicely with the rest of
Walker's anti-worker platform, which includes his having ended
collective bargaining rights for most public sector employees and
signing the deceitfully named "right to work" law, which prohibits
requirements that private-sector workers join unions or pay a
representation fee as a condition of employment. Right-to-work laws in
general are associated with poorer workplace conditions and lower pay
than in union-friendlier states.

Missouri lawmakers are on a new quest to further demoralize and degrade
citizens who rely on SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program).
State Representative Rick Brattin has introduced a bill that would,
among other things, prevent food stamps from being used to purchase fish
and steak. From House Bill 813:

A recipient of supplemental nutrition assistance program
benefits shall not use such benefits to purchase cookies, chips, energy
drinks, soft drinks, seafood, or steak.

More from the Riverfront Times:
"There's a long history of trying to dictate what somebody
should be buying on food stamps. The program itself has been really
stigmatized," says Washington University professor Mark Rank, who
authored Living on the Edge: The Realities of Welfare in America.
.........
"There have been a lot of studies on fraud, when there were actually
people buying, trading and selling their EBT cards, but it was a very
small percentage of the overall population," he says. "But fish is good
for you -- why should that be prohibited? READ MORE

One of the uglier forms of modern American anti-Semitism takes form in
the belief that Jewish Americans are more loyal to Israel than to the
United States. Iowa Republican Rep. Steve King has managed to take this
form of anti-Semitism to its next level. King so takes for granted that
American Jews should be loyal to Israel first that he's baffled that they aren't:

Rep. Steve King (R-IA) criticized "Jews in America" who, in
an effort to align themselves with President Obama's stance on Israel,
are "Democrats first and Jewish second," BuzzFeed reported on Friday.

King's comments were made during an interview on Friday with Boston
Herald Radio about the members of Congress who refused to attend Israeli
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's speech to Congress on March 3.

"Well, there were some 50 or so Democrats that, that decided they
would boycott the president's speech," King said. "Here's what I don't
understand, I don't understand how Jews in America can be Democrats
first and Jewish second and support Israel along the line of just
following their President."

Um.
There are so many ways to go with this. Not that someone with a cantaloupe
where his brain should be is capable of understanding, but let's try
explaining this as one would to a child. A very small and not
particularly bright child. Perhaps "Jews in America" can be Democrats
first because to whatever degree they hold national loyalties they are
loyal to the United States first. Because Israel is a foreign country
and Jews in America are, you know, American.

Perhaps "Jews in America" can be Democrats first because they feel
that the Democratic Party in the two-party system of their home country
(you know—the United States) best represents their political values.

Walmart
isn't the only corporate giant relying on government assistance to make
up for the low, low wages it pays its workers. According to a new
report from the University of California-Berkeley Labor Center, 52 percent of front-line fast food workers are on some form of public assistance, at a cost of nearly $7 billion a year. And the 10 largest fast food companies account for $3.8 billion of that, the National Employment Law Project estimates. READ MORE

Speaking at the Heritage Foundation in September 2013, he lavishly
praised former Senator Jesse Helms. “The willingness to say all those
crazy things is a rare, rare characteristic in this town, and you know
what? It’s every bit as true now as it was then. We need a hundred more
like Jesse Helms in the U.S. Senate,” Cruz said. READ MORE

I think it's safe to say that Senator ted Cruz' demographic of voters
falls more in line with Bill O'Reilly than Lena Dunham so Cruz decided
to announce his presidential aspirations to a crowd of 10,000
evangelical students who were forced to attend his speech.

LYNCHBURG, Va.—Sen. Ted Cruz took the stage to declare
his presidential candidacy at Liberty University Monday, surrounded by
upwards of 10,000 cheering students. They weren't all here by choice.

Attendance at convocation at Liberty is mandatory, and a group of
students clad in "Stand With Rand" shirts sat center stage—directly in
view of the cameras—to log their displeasure with having to be here. READ MORE

Like a bad penny, George Zimmerman pops up yet again with his tale of
victimization and woe. That poor, poor baby. Is it fundraising season
for him?

His divorce attorney posted a video of him going on about Barack
Hussein Obama's meanness and how unfair life has been to him. I can't
post it here but if you're really anxious to watch him whine, you can
see it here.

When asked who in the government was most unfair to him, Zimmerman
replied, "By far, the President of the United States, Barack Hussein
Obama. He had the most authority and in that sense I would hold him in
the highest regard believing that he would hold that position and do his
absolute hardest to not inflame racial tensions in America."

I knew that Jeb Bush's wife, Columba, was born and raised in Mexico, but until I read this Washington Post story
over the weekend, I didn't realize that her father was an undocumented
worker in America for a while, and later became a legal worker under a
program that I'm sure would be described by right-wingers as "amnesty":

Jose Maria Garnica Rodriguez, who died at 88 in 2013, grew up in Arperos....
After World War II, it was common to cross the border without proper
papers, said Columba’s uncle, Antonio Garnica Rodriguez, who made the
trek, too. “We just went across the border, worked, stayed there for a
while and came back.”

He said his brother later joined the “bracero” program, which
allowed manual laborers temporary legal entry to the United States.
Jose Maria got his “resident alien” card on Feb. 4, 1960. READ MORE

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) on Sunday lashed out President Barack Obama
for what he said was a "temper tantrum" after Israeli Prime Minister
used a racial ploy to get out his voters, and then seemingly revoked his
support for a Palestinian state.

Over the weekend, the president told the Huffington Post
that Netanyahu had not followed "the best of Israel's traditions" when
he warned that Arab Israeli voters were coming out "in droves."
"Although Israel was founded based on the historic Jewish homeland
and the need to have a Jewish homeland, Israeli democracy has been
premised on everybody in the country being treated equally and fairly,"
the president said.

On Sunday, McCain insisted to CNN that the "president should get over it."
"Get over your temper tantrum," the former Republican presidential
nominee quipped. "The least of your problems is what Bibi Netanyahu said
during an election campaign." READ MORE

KAUS: Well, that's right. I had no problems with them
before. But I posted this piece on the web early in the morning Monday
morning, very early. I stayed up all night doing it.

And I went to sleep and I got up and it disappeared. There's a
note from Tucker saying, "Can't trash FOX on the site. Sorry, I work
there." So, I wrote back saying, "Is that really the rule? Because if
it is, I have to quit." READ MORE

Sunday, March 22, 2015

So Paul Ryan is out there instructing states not to set up state exchanges
if the Supremes knock down the federal exchange subsidies. He said he's
been assured that Justice Alito will convince the majority that they
need to delay kicking people off of insurance until the Republican
congress can offer a conservative alternative that will be acceptable to
the Republican Governors in every state.

Guess what they're talking about as the alternative?

His remarks Thursday offered the most detailed vision yet of the House Republicans’ thinking. Mr.
Ryan suggested the GOP caucus was most enthusiastic about allowing
states to strip some of the health law’s requirements that insurance
plans must provide certain minimum benefits and a requirement that
insurers sell to all customers equally regardless of their medical
history.

“We think things like community rating and other regulations make
insurance needlessly expensive for most people and that there are better
more targeted ideas out there to help those with pre-existing
conditions get affordable care,” he said. “We just want to give people
market freedom and personal freedom so that they can buy what they
want.”

The single most important aspect of Obamacare, the one thing
that one would assume nobody would try to mess with --- the ban on
denying insurance because of a pre-existing condition --- is the main
provision they want to get rid of. In other words, they want to
make sure that people who are sick are either tied to their insurance
companies (with back-breaking premiums that go with that) for life. Or
maybe death since a lot of people just won't be able to afford insurance
at all so they'll just die.

Throughout the booms and busts of his Fort Worth oil empire and
during his brother’s notorious murder trial, Kenneth W. Davis Jr.
largely kept to himself. At 89, he still does. He puts in full workdays
at his small downtown office, with drapes drawn against the North Texas
sun. He usually dines at an exclusive club across the street, often
alone, using distinctive silverware set aside just for him.

Davis has long shut out politics, too. He remembers voting only
three times – for Eisenhower, Goldwater and Reagan. Yet last year he
thrust himself into the public eye by starting his own super PAC.

His group, Vote2ReduceDebt, aimed to move the needle in eight key
U.S. Senate races by energizing disengaged conservative voters. It spent
almost $3 million to boost Republican candidates in the 2014 midterm
election – ranking it among the top right-leaning groups of its kind.
But now it’s dead in the water, with its main operatives expelled amid questions about where the money went.

Even within the free-wheeling world of U.S. campaign finance,
Vote2ReduceDebt stands out as a cautionary tale for donors, activists
and voters.

Since the Supreme Court helped open the gates with the Citizens
United ruling, unprecedented millions have flowed into super PACs,
groups that can accept political donations of unlimited dollar amounts.
But, as Davis discovered, federal election laws do little to ensure these contributions are used as donors intended.

In addition to escaping donation limits, no rules prevent the people
running super PACs from using contributions to hire themselves or
companies owned by their relatives and other insiders.
The story of Vote2ReduceDebt is an egregious example of what can
happen in the absence of such controls, but similar scenarios have
played out on a smaller scale at dozens of PACs in the last three
election cycles.

It isn't George W. Bush's FEMA for sure. Now they're playing hardball
with those climate-denying conservative states that suck up the
disaster money like it's candy while continuing to deny the impact of
global warming.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency is making it
tougher for governors to deny man-made climate change. Starting next
year, the agency will approve disaster preparedness funds only for
states whose governors approve hazard mitigation plans that address
climate change.

This may put several Republican governors who maintain the earth
isn't warming due to human activities, or prefer to do nothing about it,
into a political bind. Their position may block their states' access to
hundreds of millions of dollars in FEMA funds. Over the past
five years, the agency has awarded an average $1 billion a year in
grants to states and territories for taking steps to mitigate the
effects of disasters. READ MORE

Earlier in the day, State Department spokesperson Jen
Psaki told reporters that when it comes to the U.S. policy towards
Israel, “We’re currently evaluating our approach.” The comments were
important, but not surprising – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu’s recent antics were bound to carry some consequences. But
Cotton, the right-wing freshman in his second month in the Senate,
called Psaki’s comments “worrisome“ – for a very specific reason.

“While Prime Minister Netanyahu won a decisive victory,
he still has just started assembling a governing majority coalition.
These kinds of quotes from Israel’s most important ally could very well
startle some of the smaller parties and their leaders with whom Prime
Minister Netanyahu is currently in negotiations.

“This raises the question, of course, if the administration intends
to undermine Prime Minister Netanyahu’s efforts to assemble a coalition
by suggesting a change to our longstanding policy of supporting Israel’s
position with the United Nations.”

I've been really tired of seeing this Kochhead Republican "strategist" Mercedes Schlapp all over the cable news shows
in the last few months and turning up as a regular on Hardball more and
more often, but I have to admit, I'd be a whole lot less tired of it if
she received the same treatment she did on this Friday's Real Time every time she was allowed on the air.

Bill Maher wrapped up his panel segment with a discussion on Sen. Ted Cruz' appearance at an event in New Hampshire -- where he scared a three year old with is rhetoric that the "whole world is on fire" -- and President Obama's speech in Ohio this week,
where he took some jabs at Republicans for their predictions of doom
and gloom and the supposed disastrous impact his policies would have on
the U.S. economy.

After getting a few jabs in on Cruz, Maher asked this of his guests.

MAHER: There are statistics on how much the world is on
fire and Obama came back with them on Wednesday in Cleveland. He said
what are you talking about, the economy is a disaster? Unemployment was
10 percent six months into my term, now it's 5.5. The Dow was under 8000
when I took office. Now it's almost 18,000. GDP was -.5.4 percent. Now
it's 2.8 percent. The deficit was 9.8 percent of GDP. Now it's 2.2
percent.At what point... these are facts... at what point do
Republicans look foolish for being on the talking point page that no
longer exists? READ MORE